The medical phase of this Wuhan Flu crisis ended a few days ago. By comparative criteria with other diseases that flashed through our country, it was never a pandemic.
“From where the sun now stands” we already know that what will be going forward will be political and not medical. We know this because the political forces of the Left have already predicted what Donald Trump will try to do to recharge the economy, get people back to work and restore social normalcy. Blue governors are already holding tele-conclaves to discuss how they might get out in front of Trump’s attempt to diffuse all the gains they’d made in “people control” such as public gatherings and shuttered small businesses, especially the kinds they’d never liked, such a religious gatherings, restaurants, retail shops, small business in general. Remember Barack Obama had targeted these very same areas in his first term, hoping to close down small business, which accounted for over half of the jobs in America, and put all those employees who lost their jobs in as comfortable-as-possible circumstance with state assistance, while sending millions of low wage jobs overseas. Blue cities and states see a big opening with this faux-pandemic to go back to that scheme, only now knowing fear is the greater weapon than force to corral those people.
They see the contest as one of wills between themselves and Donald Trump, believing that they in fact are still in charge of the inner working s of government. That they have the stronger hand.
Their entire plan, in the Congress as well as the states, depends entirely on how well the people will obey.
What we know.
What we know now about this Virus now is who is most likely to get sick, and who is most likely to weather the Flu should they get it. We have some good ideas of 1)how to treat it, as successful tests are being run all around the country. In just less than a month. We also know 2) how the disease is passed from one person to another, and how long that contact can hang around on us before taking hold in our lungs. And we know 3) how to intervene, often with nothing more than taking a bath. A good bath. And 4) we know that while the 6′ foot rule might have served a preventative purpose as the virus was first making the rounds, that people of common sense now know these things, as I mentioned in an earlier article, we can all go back to dancing cheek-to-cheek in a night club with a total stranger and still be safe, once we take a shower with the next few hours.
We even know 5) that thousands probably had gotten the Virus and recovered, thinking it was a cold…same symptoms…never even knowing they had it.
When Donald Trump gives the Green Light he can only control government facilities, such as office buildings and military bases. He can’t order restaurants to open up, or for people to patronize them. The states can still try to keep them closed.
That will be political. And the people defying them will be political.
So, in the end, either the People or those governments will decide.
Most of all we know all these preventative measures to keep the Virus down can be done on our own without any government official looking over our shoulders, like a 5th grade teacher during a test, making sure we aren’t cheating.
So, remember, we are the rulers of our domain, constitutionally as well as mathematically. And we are the ones upon the horses, and they are still afoot. Don’t let some sheriff’s department in New Jersey tell you otherwise when all the restaurateurs and flocks of diners, or small shops and flocks of customers, want to rejoin the human race and once again practice their freedoms of free and open association and commerce.
Yes, new personal rules will apply.
It will never be quite the same going out and rubbing elbows. Everyone who does do go out will be more attentive to things that, quite frankly, were rather common just 50 years ago, but forgotten as people began to take an antiseptic world and their invulnerability in it>, for granted. If you’d been out all night, when you got home you took a shower and a clock might be ticking if you don’t.
But in the end you’ll be in charge of those rules, not your governor, nor your mayor, nor any of their bean-counting bureaucrats, even if they have medical degrees.
Facts: First, the Virus isn’t “everywhere”. It isn’t floating on the wind. And it isn’t sitting on a tree in your back yard. And if it sitting on the door to the stall in the restroom, just waiting for someone to touch it, then, it was put there only recently. So wash your hands. And don’t stick your hand in your mouth. It’s actually a complicated operation to get that Virus into someone’s lungs. It is very, very tiny, but it is still a “thing” that can be seen, and it doesn’t do anything until it gets in peoples’ lungs.
Stop and think how that might occur…mainly by someone sneezing or coughing on you from very close range. If some infected person sneezes on your clothes it can linger there for days (up to 14 days, they say), but your hands must still pick that up and transfer to your mouth or nose.
If you’re over 65-75, with other respiratory ailments, what are the chance that you will get this Virus? No one knows. But if you do get it, the chances are much higher that you may become very ill or even die. But if you’re under 65, as most working, cheek-to-cheek-dancing Americans are, your chances of getting it are higher than granddad, but your chances of surviving it are very good. In the 94% range.
(As of 4/14, our total deaths of 23,765 against 587,800 known cases, is at 4% rate, meaning 96% survive. Remove the 65-75 yr old, and that number slips to around 1%. But it’s the 35 year old police officer or nurse who dies who gets all the media headlines, which only proves what they are selling is “fear” and politics)
This is why America should come out of their house, talk to the neighbors, go to a saloon, church, (or in NJ, both) buy new clothes, eat fast-food or sit-down, and browse a used book store. Even go to the ball park, or Richmond Speedway without a mask, after tail-gating. And the city police should have better things to do than go around busting those get-togethers up.
And yes, have the good sense, that if you touch another person skin-to-skin, or are down wind of a sneeze, go home and take a bath. And if it should happen that later that evening you go clubbing, take a second bath, Homer.
Also: This virus hates temperatures over 80 degrees F. In fact, it dies. It doesn’t survive. Once it gets inside your body, it’s a constant 98 degrees or thereabout. The American summer should kill it off, unless politics gets in our way. This is the most damage it will do. And it won’t come back unless we open our borders to China travel again, which probably shouldn’t happen for at least two years, and we’ve got a really good handle on it.
By comparison, if you’re wondering about the featured image, some fur trappers wiped out an entire Indian tribe, the Mandan, along the Missouri River in 1837, 17,000, by trading smallpox-infested blankets to them. Since they were peaceful malice was never suspected. George Catlin the famous Indian artist did dozens of art works there just a few years earlier. His collection found at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa is probably the only memorial of an entire people killed by a pandemic. 17,000 died, compared to the 23,000 that have died in the US to WuFlu. But the Mandans’ 17,000 was 100%.
A lot of Americans will change their habits, but that’s usually a good thing. Going from being cavalier to being more aware and cautious is always a Good Thing.
But going from alert to be afraid is not, the same as going from self-reliant to dependent, or from free to subservient is not. These are the bridges too far most governments want to reach for, which free people will not allow.
With the new power the blue states want to believe they have gained, the free people of their states need to be quick out of the gate to disabuse those states.
I can think of several non-violent ways local small business associations can work with their customer base to make exercising their governments’ excessive state powers impossible to achieve, while guaranteeing their expeditious removal from power as soon as the next election comes around.
Hoka hey!
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VASSAR BUSHMILLS
Contact: VassarB@gmail.com Twitter: BushmillsVassar
Books: Famous Common People I Have Known and Other Essays
Donald Trump, the Common Man and the American Theology of Liberty
(Both books in Kindle format only, Publishers welcome, as both need to revised)
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